2017 - Nobel Prize in Physics.

TNPSC Current Affairs - October 2017 by TNPSC Guru

The 2017 Nobel prize in Physics  has been awarded one half to Rainer Weiss, and the other half jointly to Barry C.Barish and Kip S. Thorne  "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves"

About the Observation:

• The discovery of Gravitational  Waves resulting from when two large masses orbiting each other or merger of 2 black holes
• Albert Einstein has already predicted the Gravitational Waves a hundred years ago, but it was first observed on 14 Sep 2015 at the LIGO detector in USA.
• The discovery will helps in possibility of detecting the beginning of the Universe.

About Gravitational Wave:

• It’s a ripple occurs in the fabric of space-time when two large masses(examples-black holes which has Mass more than 25 times of Sun) orbiting each other.
• In simple term, if things move it creates waves like boat moves in river creates waves, same thing if two masses move in space-time creates waves which is called Gravitational waves.
• The First Gravitational wave was detected on 14th September 2015, second was in Dec 26.2015, third detection was on January 4,2017, and recently we have detected the 4^th on September 2017. 

About LIGO:

Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave observatory (LIGO) which is located at Hanford site, USA.

It has over one thousand researchers from more than twenty countries in research about the Gravitational Waves.